Seeking clarification
Please add to the opening question a note of whether the panic occurs during:
a) the preparation stage of installation (before the first automated restart of the system)
or
b) post-preparation, the installation stage (between the first and second automated restarts).
Logging the preparation and installation stages of installation
Screenshots at http://www.wuala.com/grahamperrin/public/2011/08/01/a/?mode=gallery demonstrate the Installer Log window in foreground whilst Mac OS X Installer runs — the installation stage.
During either stage (preparation or installation) you can present a log window by keying:
With luck, you might see — possibly greyed-out beneath the foreground detail of the panic — the point at which panic occurs.
At the root of the volume to which installation is attempted: if installation fails you may find a directory:
Mac OS X Install Data
Within that directory, a log. If present, that log may be informative to you, but not as useful (to readers here) as the .panic file.
PRAM, kernel panic information and the .panic file
Apple's Mac OS X: What's stored in PRAM tells us that recent kernel panic information is stored in PRAM. If the first normal start following a panic does not present the customary dialogue, you should wonder whether/how that information was lost from PRAM.
If the kernel panic occurs during the installation stage — and if the subsequent start defaults to attempt continuation of the installation, or Mac OS X Utilities (not a normal start) — and if you are without an obvious interface to kernel panic information — then my hunch would be that whilst started in that special mode, the path to which a .panic file might normally be written is read-only …
… if that's the case and if you're comfortable at the command line, maybe start in single user mode following the panic then use the following command to see whether panic information is legible on screen:
nvram -p
(For the number of ifs above, apologies!)
It appears to be, as you suspected, the Android emulator that is causing the issue. Some users have filed an issue on Google Code. If you scroll down past all of the "Me Too's," you'll actually find useful information; there appears to be a workaround involving /Applications/Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse.ini for some.
I increased the heap space used by Eclipse, and haven't experienced this problem since.
In eclipse.ini I used the following values:
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize256m
-Xms256m
-Xmx1024m
The same issue has a duplicate. In this thread, they mentioned a slightly different method where they added -vmargs between --launcher.XXMaxPermSize256m and -Xms256m
And I assume you've installed Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager, as this is a requirement for the Android Emulator. However, in the comments, people note that it doesn't work with Mountain Lion and they had to disable it for Android Emulator to work.
For your question about the number of installs Lion from the App Store will give you, this is directly from Apple's EULA (emphasis added):
(i) to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial
use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each
Apple-branded computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Mac OS X Snow
Leopard Server (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control;
So, assuming that this is for personal, non-commercial use, Apple lets you install Lion as many times as you like on the Macs that you own or control.
Best Answer
Mac OS X's default file system is HFS+ Journaled. This means that before files are written, the data is first written to a special log called the journal. In the event of application or system crashes, when the machine re-starts it will re-run all the remaining entries in the journal to bring the file system back into pristine order. In theory anyway.
That said, it is still probably a good idea to use one of the included utilities to verify your filesystem.
You can run fsck in the Terminal or use Disk Utility to check your hard drive if you want. After a Kernel Panic or power outage, this is probably a good idea.
Disk Utility is the simpler option, just log in as normal and go to
/Application/Utilities/Disk Utilityand select your boot drive and choose "Verify". You can also run Disk Utility from your Mac OS X DVD that came with your computer (you will need to do this if you want to repair, it can't repair the boot volume if you are running the computer on it).If you want to run
fsck, you will have to do it from the startup terminal. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, since it has been years since I last used it, but on startup hold down ⌘S during startup to boot in single user mode. Then runfsckto run the diagnostic. You should also look atman fsckto look at the manual.TL;DR No, you don't generally need to. But it's not a bad idea to run a utility.